1. Keep your good work.
2. Check before leaving (I bought full moong dal instead of broken).
3. No one will respect you unless you respect yourself.
Tag: lifestyle
1. Do more than you are expected to.
2. Speak less than you are expected to.
3. Work out each time you are expected to.
I usually read e-books on the Kindle device, instead of the app.
Few days back, I happened to open the Kindle app on my phone to show it to my Mom.
Since then, I haven’t closed the app, and I happen to read 2 pages daily.
We don’t need a new life. We simply need new hooks to the existing life.
1. You always somehow know what is going to happen next.
2. Keeping yourself busy is the ultimate anecdote to keeping yourself free.
3. Procreate is a cool place 😊
There was once a saint who lived up there, in the mountains. To meditate. And think positive thoughts.
In the hut, just opposite to his, used to live a prostitute. Every day, she used to look at the saint and be inspired – as to this is how I should be living my life – filled with positivity, and thinking of God.
Meanwhile, the saint used to look at the prostitute’s house, and think about how she is ruining her life, how her life is terrible, and how he would never want a life like that.
Several years later, they both died.
Up in the clouds, it was decided that the prostitute will go to heaven and the saint will go to hell.
“Why, I was meditating whole day?” rebelled the saint.
Here’s what the administrators up there told them:
It is not what you do, it is what you are thinking about whole day, that makes the difference. While you were busy mocking the prostitute in your mind, she was busy idealising a meditative lifestyle.
It turns out, our thoughts actually run or ruin the world.
Had the first therapy session today.
Who in the world talks about it openly?
Well, we haven’t been open, that is why we have been needing therapy 🙂
On that note, it felt a bit better. Even though it will take some time to heal unseen wounds of years, well, all is well that starts well. 😊
1. The things that used to upset you do that anymore. Not even in your mind.
2. You learn from the times you lost money and don’t make the same money mistakes again.
3. You don’t lay the same expectations on people, if they have willingly proved they don’t want to stay true to the relationship (even blood relationships).
4. You find a way to laugh even amidst chaos.
5. You have replaced anger for people with empathy and sometimes even sympathy.
Growing up necessarily doesn’t mean in age. You may be in your 70’s and never learnt to control your anger.
Growth is a choice. The one that we make every single day.
In the absence of which, we just die.
Good things happen when you don’t expect them to happen, and continue doing your hard work.
But hard work without smart work is donkey work.
Rather, working hard along with making your own way is the best kind of hard work that will yield results for you.
Making calculated efforts. Making better efforts. Working with effortless ease.
All of these, make good things happen 🙂
- Saying thank you to everyone (PS: My email signature is “Thank you”, that I type every time instead of keeping it auto, because I wanna really mean it!)
- Having a schedule for your day (Even rest and leisure, otherwise Parkinson’s Law is wise enough :D)
- Speaking your truth, even if you are disliked.
5 things only rich people do because poor people cannot afford to do them:
- Forgive others and themselves (the one who feels insulted is the one who has a ton of ego. The rich, forgive without being asked for it.)
- Taking care of their health as well as mind.
- Think of others
- Think of themselves
- Give without letting anyone know
Don’t you think so?
Since I was burning with fever yesterday, the rice I prepared day before yesterday was used yesterday as well.
Used it as fried rice for lunch and dal rice for dinner.
The dal was freshly prepared, and the rice were cold. So when I poured hot burning dal on rice, the mixture still seemed sort of cold.
It made me think – as to how much power does being “chilled out” have. No matter how hot (or angry) someone else is, when you are chilled out, anything that comes in your contact also gets chilled out.
Would you want to give this a try?
Have you tried drinking plain cold milk? Without sugar or chocolate?
If yes, you know it has a calming effect.
Alternatively, if we drink warm milk without sugar, it is kind of weird. We need to add sugar to make it a bit better.
That is how life is. When we are chilled out, we are sweet naturally. When we are hot or angry, we have to make efforts to get sweetness.
We decide, which milk to be.
Creativity is a weird companion.
Exactly 24 hours back, I was bursting with ideas to write blogs on.
Right now, I don’t know what to write.
Seems like creativity has been infidel to me and left me. Except that isn’t. Because creativity is a process. If you show up, it always does.
If you are reading this blog post till here, you know that creativity has kept up. Because I kept my promise of writing this post.
Creativity is always loyal. If we are.
There’s a wonderful woman I know of, who is living her life for a great social cause. She’s been doing this for the last thirty years, started at the age of seventeen.
She doesn’t get angry.
Always works to uplift people.
Cooks great food for them.
Listens to their problems.
Offers solutions.
All epic. Super-commendable.
But I can often sense hidden anger within her. Because the people she serves don’t live up to her standards.
That’s sad.
Because no one is going to live their lives as we suggest them to be, no matter how much good that suggestion holds.
As a matter of fact, if we force them, they might grow even more resistant.
The key is acceptance. And that is the entire journey all about. Acceptance that we can only guide them and bless them, everyone takes their own sweet time to get to a place of change.
Till then, they need our blessings.
The silent anger causes greater resistance.
And loss of trust.
Happiness is contagious.
And our habits are killer.
We go where we want to go in life, based on what we do and who we are.
So if you want better things in life, be a better human being. The infection is contagious.
1. Trust others. As much as you trust yourself. Even more.
2. Stop proving yourself. Everyone has a perspective filter.
3. Goodness is questioned. Still be good.
4. It will get better. Remember, trust yourself?
5. If no one is misunderstanding you, you aren’t breaking much ceilings.
Nothing will go right in our lives unless,
a. We start appreciating what we have right now.
b. We understand that our positivity has the power to change people.
c. We believe that when people show us who they are, we need to believe them as Maya Angelou said.
1. Maturity in life is accepting that someone in family that was closest to you dome day, isn’t close anymore.
2. When you don’t check an email / notification immediately because it isn’t important, you become more powerful. (PS: 95% aren’t important.)
3. Speak your truth even when your voice shakes. The only person going to be with you from start of life to end is you, and if you don’t speak your truth, do you really want to live with a liar all your life?
4. Parkinson’s Law is as real as gravity.
5. Focus. Focus. Focus is the ultimate asset.
Today I saw a dance video of a friend of mine. She apparently was dancing with her college gang. Their energy, sync in moves, facial expressions and body language – revealed more than words ever could.
Here’s what my little knowledge of psychology tells me:
- The people we surround ourselves with determine who we become.
- Even they didn’t know that their friends play so important role in their happiness.
- It is the best thing if we choose our people wisely, and if we don’t that’s a doom on us.
But why are we talking about this?
Because I was a star player in my first job because I was nurtured that way.
In my second job, things changed drastically because:
- I asked a lot of questions, which made my manager believe I am getting too excited and I don’t know anything.
- I was always happy and booming with joy, which was also perceived as a sign of dumbness.
- Most importantly, there was once a trainer who was invited to our office. Those days my manager wasn’t talking to me (yes, that also happened!) because I had taken two days off owing to ill health. My work was in sync, so I attended the one-hour zumba session that the trainer conducted.
And damn, after that session it was a guilty feeling that encircled me. The feeling that I should have sat stuck at my desk because my boss would like it – I just didn’t want to be limited by that feeling so I attended the Zumba session. And more than anything else, it was organized by the HR of the company, and I, inter alia, received a formal email from her for attending the session.
This was just one instance, I could lay at least ten such instances that made me feel small in the organisation. Btw, instead of teaching me how to solve difficult problems, my manager used to ask me: “Will you be able to do it?” This wasn’t because I had proved my inability to him, it was because in our informal conversations he always highlighted how he felt men were more apt to doing this job.)
Was I wrong? Yes, in the desire of joining that organisation, I was wrong. Was I wrong in my stint at that workplace? Well, only if curiosity and cheerfulness are wrong.
In a fortunate tale of events, my leader did not like me and asked me to “look for further opportunities” because I didn’t fit the bill of fitting in.
I did get out of the organisation, and it was the best thing that happened to me.
Now, before we conclude, there were some good things in the organisation:
- They did provide me bread and butter
- The operations and sales team were driven to meet the customer needs, always
- We had a break of one month after working for two months (good as well as not so good as all drive was lost).
- My manager (yes the one who stopped talking to me) was cool and calm (sadly not driving me to performance.)
- He said he felt bad about the leader asking me to leave, and it was all in good intent. He treated me like his daughter and perhaps because of which never bothered enough to make me bold enough to face the muddy waters of the job which is of the most importance to perform.
But this post isn’t necessarily about what was good in the organisation that I worked with, and what wasn’t. It was more about the culture. All organisations are the best – if they hire the right people
My friend was dancing along with her friends and they all enjoyed it. I danced with my colleagues and my non-communicative manager felt worse because of this. Of course that guilt slid into me. Of course that did affect me.
That is why it is important to review the company and the culture you are working with.
It is going to be hard, but so is it hard for the company to find the right fit for them. If they could do the emotional labour of being patient and going through the difficult stuff, so is it your responsibility to move the needle and go to the place you would be proud to say in your first page interview.
You reflected on something that you wanted to change.
And you decided to change.
The question is: Till when?
Not only for one day or two. What are you doing to make change stick?
Before forming one more new habit and failing at all of them and calling yourself a failure, create a plan for sticking to just one habit.
And then the next. Drop by drop. Dip by dip.